A European Ariane 5 rocket successfully delivered two satellites, one of them carrying a NASA Earth science instrument, into orbit Thursday (Jan. 25) despite a malfunction that caused a telemetry dropout during launch.

A new NASA mission, launching today, will ride along with a commercial satellite to investigate the boundary between Earth and space — a critical zone that changes based on the sun above and terrestrial weather below.

Technicians deployed the solar panels of NASA's Mars InSight lander Tuesday (Jan. 23) in an important test ahead of the spacecraft's departure to its launch site, California's Vandenberg Air Force Base.